Technical Field
This disclosure relates to a sheet discriminator and an image forming apparatus incorporating the sheet discriminator.
Related Art
An example of an image forming apparatus shows a configuration in which a sheet discriminator is disposed inside the image forming apparatus to discriminate information of a sheet being conveyed in a sheet conveying path.
This sheet discriminator includes an optical sensor that has a light emitting element and a light receiving element therein. The optical sensor includes a sheet information detecting sensor to optically detect information of a sheet. The light emitting element of the sheet information detecting sensor emits light to a surface of a sheet. Among the light emitted by the light emitting element, the light reflected on the surface of the sheet is received by a reflection light receiving element.
Specifically, the sheet information detector causes the light emitting element to emit light to a sheet that is conveyed via a sheet conveying path and causes the reflection light receiving element to receive the light reflected on the sheet and the transmission light receiving element to receive the light transmitted through the sheet, so that the sheet information detector can detect feature information of the sheet to specify the sheet type based on optical information including a level of the received light.
Accordingly, based on the thus detected feature information of the sheet, a controller that functions as a sheet distinguisher distinguishes the sheet types, and the image forming apparatus sets the image forming conditions according to the sheet type.
The sheet discriminator is disposed not only inside an image forming apparatus but also outside the image forming apparatus.
The sheet discriminator has an external case having sidewalls. On one sidewall of the external case, an opening is provided through which the sheet can be pulled out. Further, the sheet discriminator includes an optical sensor and a sheet loading part. The optical sensor to detect information of the sheet. The sheet loading part on which the sheet inserted through the opening is loaded is disposed facing the optical sensor with a certain gap inside the external case.